Holy Spirit Catholic Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is an inadequate school Weak leadership has led to a decline in pupils' progress and attainment.

Leaders' plans to improve the school do not focus sharply enough on what success will look like for pupils. Leaders have an overgenerous view of the quality of teaching. They rarely evaluate the impact of their actions on pupils' progress and attainment.

Senior leaders have provided governors with inaccurate, and sometimes misleading, information. As a result, governors have not been able to hold senior leaders to account for the decline in standards. Teachers do not have high enough expectations of what pupils can achieve and often fail to plan lessons that b...uild on pupils' prior learning.

As a result, pupils' attainment and progress are below average and show little signs of improvement. The poorly taught curriculum means pupils have limited opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills across a range of subjects. Pupils are not given the opportunity to develop their writing skills across other subjects.

Subject leaders have not been provided with the necessary support or guidance to carry out their roles effectively. The checks that they make on the quality of pupils' work are ineffective because they do not fully consider the impact of teaching on pupils' achievement. Pupils' behaviour is inadequate.

Some pupils display poor behaviour in lessons and while moving around school. Many members of staff feel unsupported by senior leaders when dealing with challenging behaviour. Pupils' attendance is too low and the proportion of pupils who are persistently absent from school is too high.

Teachers often fail to provide challenging work for disadvantaged pupils and pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Many of these pupils make slow progress in their learning. The activities that staff plan in the early years sometimes fail to promote children's progress and independence.

The school has the following strengths Pupils are friendly and polite. They enjoy school and are safe and well looked after. Teachers effectively support pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Information about this school

This is an average-sized primary school. There is a specially resourced provision for a very small number of children with SEND in the Nursery, run on behalf of the local authority. The proportion of disadvantaged pupils is above the national average.

The proportion of pupils with SEND is above the national average. Most pupils are White British. The school's most recent section 48 inspection of religious education took place in January 2016.